Roadmap

Feeling lost? The novel writing roadmap will take you where you want to go!

Begin at the beginning and keep on going to the end. There’s a lot of information on Novel Writing Help, but if you follow the articles below, in order, you’ll know everything you need to know to write and publish a your novel.

I’ve divided the information into four phases. If you want to skip ahead, here they are…

Phase 1: Prepare to Succeed

The information below covers everything you need to do before you write your novel. It lays a rock-solid foundation – not just for the next novel you write, but for your novel writing career as a whole.

Phase 2: Write Your Novel

Phase 1 was all about your writing career as a whole – or all the novels you’re going to write. The second phase focuses on your first novel (or your next novel if you’ve written a book before).

More specifically, it takes you from a blank sheet of paper to a solid working draft. The language may not be that pretty by the time you reach the end, but you’ll have a gripping story full of compelling characters to take forward to Phase 3, where we’ll work on polishing the words themselves.

Phase 3: Get the Words Right

Phase 2 of this process was about what you say – the people, the places, the events and so on. The aim was to come up with a working draft in which what you said was bang on the money, but how you said it (the words themselves) was still a little on the rough side.

Phase 3 is about taking those words and, as Hemingway put it, “getting them right”…

Interviewer: “How much rewriting do you do?”
Hemingway: “I rewrote the ending of ‘A Farewell to Arms’ thirty-nine times before I was satisfied.”
Interviewer: “What was it that stumped you?”
Hemingway: “Getting the words right.”

The articles below are a complete course in how to write with style.

Read them before you write your first draft – to familiarize yourself with the essentials. Or go with the flow the first time around and use these articles to edit the draft later.

Phase 4: Get Published

Finally, the best part of the whole novel writing process – getting your novel published.

Actually, getting published is the easy part. The real goal, of course, is to sell as many copies of your novel as you can!

(Note: This section is in need of a major overhaul, which I’m currently working on. The articles below will get you started, but stay tuned for a more up to date look at how to publish and promote your fiction.)